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Opening the Gateway to Ancient health and Spiritual Practices for the Modern Mother

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A Mother-Centered Guide to Spiritual & Physical Wellbeing

Book Launch Mother’s Day 2015

This is a health and prevention-focused guidebook that is a realistic reference for today’s modern mother (e.g. shopping lists included for herbs, diet, aromatherapy). We hope to increase the accessibility of ayurvedic wisdom surrounding motherhood by focusing on ways to implement the core principles of these approaches in modern life (and by avoiding too much jargon). Just as in yoga, where we strive to embody the unity of effort and ease, Ayurvedic Motherhood aims to embody the equinox of health science and spiritual wisdom.

This book is a guide to:

+ natural health, diet, yoga, mantra practices from pregnancy to postpartum+ consciously directing the process of self-growth in the journey into motherhood.+ customized self care practices for the body and emotions.

Letter to Readers

This book is a guide to consciously directing the process of self-growth and spiritual connection inherent in the journey into motherhood. We are truly blessed to be able to experience, in motherhood, a reawakening of spiritual intelligence in every cell in our bodies.

Modern culture and infrastructure no longer support conception and pregnancy in a way that acknowledges mothering as the most important role in our society. Together, we can change that.

Only women can visit the gate of life and death to give birth; only a woman can sustain life with her very being. We call forth every woman to begin this change in modern society by first honoring herself, and the women in her life, with this reverence. As modern women assemble in many different forms to create family through community, we set the intention for women who read this book to spread this knowledge within these infrastructures. We are already seeing a shift in midwifery, doula, and natural health communities towards more mother-centered approaches to pregnancy.

Because ayurveda is a system to increase your awareness of how the energies in your life manifest in your emotions and body, it is also an empowerment process. When we can see how the various aspects of our lives play into our experience, we can use that knowledge to make decisions that are more balancing for ourselves. Ultimately, our lifestyles, habits, and perspectives are our choice. Through ayurvedic awareness, we can empower ourselves to make healthier choices, and consciously achieve balance in our bodies and minds.

As we are all different, what is “healthy” in any given situation is a dynamic and relative concept. This means that learning our own rhythms, and how we relate to the world around us, is at the heart of ayurvedic living; just as it is at the heart of motherhood. Birthing can activate ancestral memories on the cellular level, and can be a spiritual unfolding. For all of these reasons, ayurveda honors each experience of motherhood and pregnancy as unique and omnipotent.

Ayurveda is anthropologically recognized as the mother of healing sciences–from Traditional Chinese medicine to modern Hippocratic, or Western, medicine. The wisdom of ayurveda is universal and can often be easily integrated with other healing approaches. We hope to increase the accessibility of the ayurvedic wisdom surrounding motherhood by focusing on ways to implement the core principles of these approaches in modern life (and by avoiding too much jargon). There is so much incredible information on this topic in the ancient ayurvedic texts, that in our research, we frequently had to stop ourselves from diving too deeply into intricacies, and realign with our goal: providing a big-picture guide that is globally accessible, and a realistic reference for today’s mother-to-be.

Our focus in this book is on health and prevention, instead of remedies. There are many incredible ayurvedic approaches to pregnancy-related ailments and we list a few resources for this in the appendix: Recommended Resources. So much of pregnancy-related reading is full of the perils of this transformative process. This can be overwhelming and fear-propagating for expecting women. Thus, we chose to focus on the inspiration, the joy, the incredible spiritual growth that can come from these ancient practices–and can support you through this transformation.

This is a work of love, born from two Indian women who feel called to restore the deep reverence for mothers that was the foundation of ancient matriarchal societies (such as in the Indus Valley, pre-orthodox Hindu culture). As we value life experience as a significant part of education, it is important that knowledge for women’s health be passed on to women, by women. All women, in our opinion, should visit the traditions and practices of their personal heritage, and consider them.

There is so much to learn from the ancient cultures in the matters of birth, death, and living harmoniously with our universe, that we must not ignore the synchronicity among the practices across cultures. Ancient healing arts have the power of millennia to validate their power. It is your interest in this great science that allows us to do what we love: spread the wisdom of ayurveda.